I'm Brett and I'm Alice and we are The Prosecutors.

We discuss the closing arguments in the Chauvin trial, the intricacies of the jury's verdict, and what the sentence might be.

Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors' Brett and I'm joined as always with my collegial co-host, Alice.

Thank you, Brett. I think it may have been more appropriate if you said, like, I don't know, crawling back into the closet quite literally.

I know last time we tried my laundry room, but the sound is just so good in a closet, so I'm back in a closet in a new house.

Alice is sacrificing comfort for the quality, sound quality because I'm not a good enough audio engineer to deal with those issues.

Thank you, Alice, for all the sacrifices you make on behalf of the audience.

Anything for our audience, but thank you guys for just hanging with us as we figure out sound in new places.

Thank you all for sticking with us in this quasi-live coverage we've done in the Chauvin trial.

I know the verdict's been in for about a week now when you actually, yes, for about a week now when you hear this episode, I will point out if you were a patron on our Patreon, you would have received all of the episodes except for this one before the verdict was read.

Just a little shout out for the Patreon if you guys want to become patrons. In any event, we've reached the end of this trial.

By now, you know the verdict Derek Chauvin was found guilty of all three counts that he was charged with in the murder of George Floyd.

We're going to get to that in a minute and sort of talk through a lot of the legal questions a lot of you have asked us about that sentence or excuse me, about that conviction

and what it means for a possible sentence. But before we do that, we do want to take a moment to walk through the closing arguments.

We've been at this from the beginning, we started with the openings and we did not want to skip the closing arguments even if you already know what the verdict is going to be.

And I think when you listen to these closing arguments and some of the points that the prosecution and the defense made, some of you who had some questions about how the jury came to the conclusion came to or whether the jury came to the correct conclusion, I think these arguments really do exactly what they're supposed to, which is layout the law, layout the facts that have been established trial and tell the jury why they should reach the verdict that the various parties want them to reach.

And we'll start as every case starts with the prosecution. The way that argument works is the prosecution has the first word and the last word and the reason for that is the burden is on the prosecution.

We all know this that the prosecution must prove that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

There's no burden on the defendant. The defendant doesn't have to say anything. The defendant doesn't want to make an opening statement or closing argument. They don't even have to do that. They can sit silent. The prosecution has the burdens.

The prosecution starts, then the defense makes its argument and the prosecution has an opportunity to rebut the things that are said.

And in this case, the prosecution began and what I thought was a very powerful way with a sentence. His name was George Perry Floyd Jr. When I was listening to this argument, this immediately struck me as incredibly powerful in a very simple way.

And I spoke to Floyd's humanity while also subtly tipping the prosecution's cap to the movement that had erupted after his death, which often resolved itself into a very simple demand that people, quote, say his name.

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